“700 players facing the scrapheap after being released from their clubs”

With 700 players facing the scrapheap after being released from their clubs, will they turn their lives around or end up in prison like Michael Kinsella?

As fascinating read and write up by Joe Bernstein (www.dailymail.co.uk) in to the extreme issues that footballers face when they are released from their clubs, and a lot of the time this comes without any warning. Some footballers do build another live for themselves but for many this is only the start of a tramatic experience that can have fatal endings. I really think clubs have to start doing more in terms of eductating, exspecially the youth players that they must have a back up plan just incase the football life of dreams dosen`t go exactly the way they had hope as in an instance this career can be wipe out. I actually believe having a back up plan can have a positive effect on their football career as it can give them another sense of focus and determination that it`s important to have a form of balance in life if one is to suceed in any career.

The full article is below and links to all sources that were involved, including pictures are at the bottom of this page –

Michael Kinsella started his career apparently destined for glory alongside Jamie Carragher in Liverpool’s youth team. But when Kinsella replaced the buzz of football by dealing in drugs, he ended up in prison, where his only contact with the game that had promised him so much was in kickabouts with fellow inmate Joey Barton, then serving time for assault and affray.

Kinsella’s tale of broken dreams serves as an extreme warning to the 700 professional footballers now out of a job after being told, as the season ended, that they will not be getting new contracts at their clubs.

As he says after serving six years for drug smuggling: ‘You touch a certain lifestyle as a young player. When the money fizzles out, you do anything to keep it going.’

Reformed: Ex-Liverpool player Michael Kinsella served a prison sentence for drug dealing after being released

CASE STUDY ONE – Moses Ashikodi

Moses Ashikodi was tipped to be the next big thing when he made his debut for Millwall at 15. But it all went wrong when the England Youth star pulled a knife on a team-mate.

Despite chances at West Ham, Watford and Rangers, he drifted out of top-flight football and last season hit a new low after he damaged medial ligaments playing for Conference side Ebbsfleet. ‘Football kept breaking my heart every two minutes and I was drinking just to blank everything out,’ he says. ‘After one game I even drank on the team coach until I passed out.’

Now he is trying to turn things around by training as a fitness instructor. ‘I’ve stopped drinking, I’m eating right, and the course is teaching me properly about my body,’ he says. ‘I’m only 25 but I’ve got my hunger back and would like to go on trial with a league club this summer.’

Sadly, Kinsella’s story — talented goalkeeper released by Tranmere at 20 and then turning to crime to pay for a house in Spain and several fast cars — is not unusual. Nearly 150 former footballers are currently in prison, the majority for drugs offences. Most of the players released by clubs this summer will not end up inside, of course, but the issue of what happens to them now is still worrying in a sport obsessed with money and fame.

For those who do not make it, the rising levels of depression, addiction, financial ruin and criminality threaten to reach epidemic proportions without a strong approach from the game’s top stakeholders.

‘We are taking hundreds of calls from players whose contracts are finishing,’ says Oshor Williams, of the Professional Footballers’ Association. ‘For top-end players, the issue is a loss of identity and status, and needing a new challenge. For the lad who has been released by Accrington, the concern may be how to pay the mortgage.’

The PFA spend the majority of their £8million education budget training players in new careers. Besides the popular courses for sports science, physiotherapy, sports management and journalism, they have funded training for an airline pilot (Richard Kell, ex-Barnsley, Lincoln and Scunthorpe), a doctor (former Tottenham trainee Elliot Onochie) and an oil-rig worker (Clive Mendonca, ex-Charlton).

Next big thing: Moses Ashikodi was tipped to be the next big thing but pulled a knife on a team-mate

CASE STUDY TWO – Gavin Heeroo

Growing up to strict Mauritian parents on Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm estate, Gavin Heeroo embraced the flashier elements of the footballer’s lifestyle — even though he was only on the fringes of the Crystal Palace first team and made just one senior outing.

When Palace let him go in 2004, he was guided by money rather than professional ambition, and played for Conference clubs Fisher and Grays because their wealthy owners were offering bigger wages than League clubs. ‘It was a big mistake,’ he says. He gambled destructively and eventually went to Sporting Chance for help.

With his football dream shattered, Heeroo went into business with former Palace team-mate and current Bolton manager Dougie Freedman, running a company called Focus Fitness UK. They hire ex-players to run fitness sessions for stockbrokers and others in the City of London.

Having moved back in with his parents to save money, Heeroo, 29, wants to make an impact in his new career. ‘I signed for Palace at 17 and I had a nice flat and leased a new Mercedes. I couldn’t afford them when I left so I got into gambling. And I couldn’t do it small — I’d bet £20,000 or £30,000 over a weekend. ‘I knew when I went into the fitness industry, I’d have to start at the bottom again. But business is my gamble now.’

It is still not enough for some, though. Kinsella, released from jail in November, has spent recent months visiting clubs to warn players of the dangers awaiting them when their careers end. He is backed by an organisation called Xpro, who claim the PFA do not do enough to help former players.

‘I was a bad, angry person who got into drug-dealing because I got greedy and it offered good money,’ says Kinsella.

‘And it can happen today. A lot of players will have mates from the same kind of places and council estates I did.

‘When football finishes and there is no education to fall back on, the temptation is there. I left football at Tranmere aged 20. At 25, I was earning Premier League money [from drug dealing]. Morecambe and Chester offered me £200 a week, I didn’t even consider it.’

Inevitably, Kinsella got caught. During his time at Liverpool’s Walton Prison, he was temporarily joined by Barton. ‘We played in the same kickabouts,’ he says. ‘I don’t want more players going to jail. I ask 32-year-old players what they are going to do next. They don’t know. They are retiring with no money behind them.’

Alan Hudson, once darling of Chelsea, Stoke and Arsenal fans who retired in 1985, admits no longer being the centre of attention was like a bereavement. ‘Nobody knows how traumatic it is,’ he says. ‘I found gambling was my biggest problem. You can sweat off the booze — but not debts. I must have lost £200,000 and ended up living off £30-a-week dole money.’

Former Charlton player Paul Mortimer, who now works for the PFA counselling others struggling with retirement, agrees: ‘I was depressed for the first 18 months after I retired [in 2001]. I couldn’t get out of bed.’

Sporting Chance: After leaving Crystal Palace Gavin Heeroo decided to play for Fisher and Grays rather than league clubs as they offered bigger wages

CASE STUDY THREE – Richard Kell

Richard Kell was not in the same financial position as most Premier League stars when his career ended at 27, having played for Torquay, Scunthorpe, Barnsley, Scarborough and Lincoln.

He needed to work and set his sights on becoming an airline pilot. Impressed by his determination, the PFA helped him win an insurance claim for retiring through injury then part-funded the £70,000 aviation courses he needed.

The result has been a great success and, for the past year, he has been a pilot with Jet2.com, flying from Leeds-Bradford Airport to Rome, Alicante and Venice.

Yesterday he was doing the run to Barcelona. ‘I get recognised by the occasional Barnsley fan, who does a double-take,’ says Kell. ‘And sport, especially football, is still in my blood, I flew over Cardiff last week and had a look out at the Millennium Stadium.

‘It is nice to see some of Europe’s best grounds from the air! I never earned enough from playing football to see me comfortably for the rest of my life.

‘Aviation will last you until you’re 65. It appealed to me more than staying in the game as a coach.’

Former Crystal Palace player Gavin Heeroo has turned his life around after seeking help for a gambling addiction which saw him lose £30,000 in a weekend at Euro 2008. Through his company, Focus Fitness UK, he now trains former footballers as fitness instructors and can be seen putting City traders through their paces on the streets of London’s Square Mile at 6.30 every morning.

‘I went from having no money as a kid to having money at Palace and back to no money when I left,’ says Heeroo.

‘But I still wanted the lifestyle: the flat, the holidays, the leased Mercedes. I got into gambling to try to pay for it. I know the pitfalls. Every day we get calls from a worried girlfriend or parent about a footballer who’s not coping with being out the game. We sign them up on fitness courses, give them a purpose, and by the time we’ve finished with them, they are qualified to get a job. I know guys who are now earning £100,000 a year, more than they did as players.’

Thanks to Heeroo, former MK Dons player Craig Dobson now has steady employment in a London gym, while former QPR and Northampton midfielder Chris Arthur, 23, is among 30 players who have gained their instructor’s qualification to stay off the scrapheap.

His morale boosted by training alongside other ex-players, Arthur gained the confidence to have another crack in football and last week was signed by AFC Wimbledon in League Two. ‘You’re brought up to believe you are going to be a football superstar, but not everyone can make the grade,’ he says. ‘The problem is that players get no information about not making it.

Pilot: After retiring at 27, Richard Kell (right) set his sights on becoming an airline pilot and now works with Jet2.com

‘I was at QPR from the age of 13 and at 20 I was called in and told my career was over. It was a real shock. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d just play five-a-sides with my mates hoping the phone would ring. You have to be mentally strong or you’ll go crazy. A mate of mine knew Gavin and the fitness work has been a good way for me to get back into the game.’

Clark Carlisle, the PFA chairman who himself retired at the end of the season after a 15-year career, will feature in a BBC documentary this summer, talking to former players about their problems with drink and depression.

The PFA insist they are doing what they can to help ex-professionals and proudly point to success stories such as former Chelsea FA Cup winner Gavin Peacock, now a clergyman after PFA-funded training, and Nigel Adkins, unsung as a player but now, after taking a specialised physio- therapy course, a manager in his own right at Reading.

Help: The PFA helped Nigel Adkins through a physiotherapy course after he retired

Next week the PFA will hold a two-day seminar at The Belfry to help footballers in need of a new career. ‘Wherever possible, we help our members down whatever career path they choose,’ says the union’s director of education, Pat Lally. ‘It can be anything. We had one player who set up his own dog-grooming business.’

Clearly, giving footballers opportunities and purpose after retirement is crucial to avoiding problems in the future. And Michael Kinsella, for one, hopes none of the players released in 2013 ends up, as he did, facing a life behind bars.

For full article and links to all sources that were involved, including pictures please on the following link